Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-176359 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Literature 1) discloses a structure in which a mounting seat portion having a substantially box shape is disposed for a lower garnish mounted to the lower end of a tailgate of a vehicle rear portion and the lower garnish is mounted on an outer panel of the tailgate with a clip engaged with the mounting seat portion.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-306095 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Literature 2) discloses a bumper mounting structure in which a bumper reinforcement in a bumper at the front of the vehicle is mounted on each of bumper stays of side members using a positioning bolt disposed on a mounting seat and protruding toward the front of the vehicle as a positioning unit in the vehicle width direction for the bumper reinforcement, a pair of semicircular left and right slits as a weak unit are disposed around the positioning bolt, and a pair of top and bottom bridges each having a narrow plate-like shape are disposed between the top opposed ends and between the bottom opposed ends of the pair of left and right slits.
When a vehicle is hit by another vehicle from behind the tailgate, in particular, when that collision is small enough to be within a stroke of from the surface of the lower garnish to the surface of the outer panel, if the member receiving the impact load can be limited to only the lower garnish, the necessity of a steel-metal repair or other suitable repairs of the outer panel can be eliminated and this can reduce the burdens on the user.
For example, in the lower-garnish mounting structure disclosed in Patent Literature 1, the mounting seat portion on which the clip is disposed and the outer panel are adjacent to each other. Accordingly, if the rigidity between the surface (design surface) of the lower garnish and the mounting seat portion (side wall forming the mounting seat portion) is high, the mounting seat portion may be displaced by the same amount as the amount of displacement (the amount of deformation) of the surface of the lower garnish in a collision, the surface of the outer panel may be pressed by the mounting seat portion, which is adjacent to the outer panel, and the outer panel may be deformed. In contrast to this, if the rigidity between the surface of the lower garnish and the mounting seat portion is set low, the lower garnish may be deformed by, for example, merely a press on the surface of the lower garnish by a user with a finger, and this may raise another issue of a decrease in the marketability of the lower garnish.
A hypothetical possible approach to addressing the above-described issues is a structure in which the structure disclosed in Patent Literature 2 is applied to a lower garnish and a slit is formed around the clip seat of the lower garnish.
The structure disclosed in Patent Literature 2 is a structure that can be applied when the bumper reinforcement is displaced in the direction extending along the surface of the mounting seat of the bumper stay (direction perpendicular to the axis of the positioning bolt). Thus it is difficult to apply the structure disclosed in Patent Literature 2 to the case where a vehicle is displaced in the direction perpendicular to the surface of the outer panel and the mounting seat portion (direction along the axis of the clip) when the vehicle is hit by another vehicle from behind.
That is, the structure that is arranged in the front of a vehicle and that absorbs displacement of the bumper reinforcement by a load input in the vehicle width direction and the structure that is arranged in the back of a vehicle and that absorbs displacement of the lower garnish by a load input from the back of the vehicle toward the front of the vehicle (toward the outer panel) are essentially different in the direction of the applied load. Thus, it is difficult to apply the load absorbing structure disclosed in Patent Literature 2 to the mounting portion of the lower garnish for the outer panel.